Marin Snapshot: San Rafael author Karp paves the road for people with disabilities

DON'T SAY Gary Karp is "confined" to a wheelchair. The 57-year-old San Rafael author and speaker doesn't allow anything, including becoming paralyzed in 1973, to stop him — from biking Mt. Tam, traveling the country raising awareness about disability or writing four books.

"I'm not 'wheelchair-bound,'" Karp said. "When you can't walk, the wheelchair is a source of mobility, therefore it liberates."

Whether it's setting able-bodied people free from their assumptions about disability, supplying vital information to people with disabilities or working with occupational therapists, liberation is what Karp is all about. Since 1999, he has made his living writing books and magazine articles and speaking about disability.

Q: You've pretty much invented your own job. How did you come to decide to do this for a living?

A: I became paralyzed by a spinal cord injury at the age of 18. From the moment I returned to the community as a wheelchair user, it was clear that the world had no idea how to see me as a whole person. When your daily experience is this vast disconnect between who you are and how people react to you, there is a need to set things straight.

Q: But first you got a degree in architecture and then had an 11-year career as a graphic designer, yes?

A: Yes, and then I developed tendonitis. So I started consulting and writing about ergonomics. My writing caught the attention of an editor at O'Reilly Media in Sebastopol, and that's how I came to write, "Life on Wheels," a guidebook for people using wheelchairs, in 1999.

Q: You've said putting people with disabilities on a pedestal gets in the way. Can you explain?

A: When you become disabled, you adapt. I was given the tools, such as the wheelchair. I went through a rehabilitation process. Thinking that people with disabilities are heroic gets in the way. If it happened to you, you would adapt.

Q: You travel around the country doing speaking engagements, yes?

A: In 2004, the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation began sponsoring me to travel around the U.S. and speak to university students in occupational and physical therapy, and at spinal cord rehabilitation centers. I speak at more than 20 locations a year. It's patronizing when people are amazed that you can do the simplest things. "You drive a car! You travel!" I'm not disabled. For five years, when I was in architecture school, I was carried up the steps. I was disabled by the steps, not my paralysis.